Former Angels star Doug DeCinces sentenced to home detention in insider trading case
Former Angels star Doug DeCinces sentenced to home detention in insider trading case
by Emily Rasmussen, Sean Emery
Former Angels baseball star Doug DeCinces was sentenced by a federal judge in Santa Ana on Monday to eight months of home detention and ordered to pay a fine for his role in an insider-trading scheme.
DeCinces, 68, was convicted in May 2017 for his role in the trading scheme that involved the alleged use of non-public information about a pending merger. DeCinces, who long denied the charges against him, later worked with government prosecutors as they sought to build a case against an alleged associate.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Guilford handed down a one-day sentence, but DeCinces has credit for that amount of time served so will not do any more time behind bars. Guilford also fined him $10,000 and ordered the defendant to spend eight months in home confinement as part of two years of supervised release.
Following his conviction more than two years ago, DeCinces, of Newport Beach, agreed to help federal prosecutors in their case against James V. Mazzo, a friend from Laguna Beach, whose two trials ended with mistrials when jurors deadlocked. Prosecutors dumped the case against Mazzo in December.
Guilford said earlier Monday he considered a short prison term for DeCinces “to help you sort things out and to plot a path back, but you convinced me you don’t need that.”
Guilford added, “You’re a good man who made a mistake… I wish you the best.”
Family members and friends of the former third baseman were in the courtroom, and hugged the teary-eyed DeCinces after proceedings ended Monday.
“I’m very thankful for finally getting through this long ordeal,” DeCinces said in an interview after the sentencing. “It’s been extremely difficult on myself and my family. I’m just blessed that it’s over, I now know what I have to face and move on.”
Mazzo, the ex-CEO of Santa Ana-based Advanced Medical Optics, was accused of providing private information to DeCinces about the company’s pending merger with Abbot Laboratories, a larger medical company.
DeCinces was then accused of using that information to turn a $1 million-plus stock-market profit for himself and another $1 million profit for his family and friends, including David Parker.
The first criminal trial in the case ended with DeCinces and Parker being convicted in 2017, but jurors deadlocked on the charges against Mazzo. Mazzo was then the sole defendant in the second trial, which ended in another deadlocked jury and a mistrial.
DeCinces, who denied the charges for years, agreed to cooperate with the government after the first trial and testified against Mazzo during the second trial that the ex-CEO had tipped him to the merger weeks before it became public. The former baseball player then said that Mazzo told him to keep quiet, after the stock purchases drew the interest of New York Stock Exchange investigators.
DeCinces has also paid a $2.5 million fine to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
City News Service contributed to this report
All credit goes to Emily Rasmussen, Sean Emery
Originally published on https://www.dailynews.com
